Heroes in Business - Mark Victor Hansen, Founder and Co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Book Series, Motivational Speaker, Trainer & Author markvictorhansenlibrary.com

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Catch David Cogan as he interviews Mark Victor Hansen, an American inspirational and motivational speaker, trainer and author. He is best known as the founder and co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series at the Eliances Heroes Show. Reach him at markvictorhansenlibrary.com

That's right. And thank you so much. Welcome back to the show again. You know, this is David Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show. Keep on watching. You know, we're all over the internet. You can go to Alliance.com to find past episodes. And thank you again for the feedback we continue to get when I recently interviewed the founder of E! Entertainment. excited again about having our next hero back. We're good friends and he always has something so interesting going on. And so welcome to the show, Mark Victor Hansen, and you can reach him at markvictorhansenlibrary.com. Now, Mark, I'm just going to steal a little bit of the thunder. You're known for creating, well, of course, being part of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Ask the Bridge from Your Dreams to Destiny, The One-Minute Millionaire, The Enlightened Way to Wealth, and Cracking Millionaire Code, Your Key to Enlightened Wealth, and a whole lot more. And we're going to talk about something really exciting today.

I'm going to have you take the thunder for that, but welcome again back to the show. My pleasure. today. I'm going to have you take the thunder for that, but welcome again back to the show. My pleasure. It has been a delight to be your friend. And more importantly, because of what you and I do, people think that we're the celebrity, but the people we're talking to are the celebrity because there's greatness in each and every individual. And what you try to do as eAlliances is bring out that wonderful potential in business and life and joy and happiness and family. And I'm just, I'm thankful that you've allowed me or invited me to participate on a multiplicity of times. And you brought not only me, but my wife and friends like Jeff Hoffman, who are just absolute superstars and our son Preston and stuff. So it's been very exciting for

me. Absolutely. And it's always an honor to have you here and amazing. You know how long I think we've known each other now for like five, six, seven, something years and stuff. So time has gone by like that quite a lot. So I think it's this one's going to be a very important topic because one of the things I know is, is we always as you get older, one thinks about a legacy, right? A legacy, what will they leave? And I think you're going to talk about something very precious that I think 99.99% of people don't know about a legacy. So can you go ahead and talk to us about what's going on regarding that and what you've got? Yeah.

Well, as you said, I used to be a professional speaker that wrote books. And the first time I did that, I sold 20,000 books in a year at $10 each, made 200,000. That's 50 years movies now. And then we sold the company about a decade ago, a little longer. And then suddenly we had this crazy thing called COVID hit. And we've gone from 19,000 bookstores to 400 independent bookstores, which breaks my heart. Because if you look here in my library, I have over 50,000 books. I haven't read every word of every one, but I've touched every one. I've highlighted some, I've read what was important to me, made notes. And I said, wait a second, you know, we can't let bookstores and books die. So, and what happens is the minute we learn that when somebody writes a book, then they start reading more. And I learned that when my children were in elementary school at Kaiser Elementary. They went to Montessori and then they went to Kaiser.

And I sat through six kindergartens and finally found this teacher that was a great, inspiring teacher of his fellows. And she sang to the kids. She had them whisper to each other. She had them jiggle each other. She played the piano and sang in english and spanish and and it just every kid learned everything and and my daughters have done all of five of our kids have done excessively well you know most of them anyhow so the the book industry was going like this and and the biggest company which when i did one minute millionaire random house paid me a million dollars for i wrote about there they laid off 8 000 people people in Crystal. I said, wait a second, the book industry is going south. We got to figure out how to make it go north.

So we said, well, we'll start our own publishing company. And we're going to take people's impact story and bring it to life. And then all the way to the legacy, just let me say, I'll do my little cliche that I wrote. A biography, there's biographies and autobiographies, we'll define that in a minute, but a biography is the only lasting legacy of love that gave your family, your friends, the future, and the world that goes into perpetuity. In other words, the people you and I have had at alliances, a lot of them are millionaires, deck a million, 10 million cent millionaires, a hundred million or a billion. And, and nowadays we've got three people fighting to

be trillionaires in a world like Elon Musk and Bezos and right. And so long, which is very exciting. But if you left all that money to people, what happens is in three generations, it's almost always gone. Rarely is it not gone with the exception of Rockefellers and Andy Carnegie, my hero, and a few other people, which we'll talk to if you want. The point is, if you write your biography, you do five things. First of all, you tell them what your values are, then your principles, your philosophy, the trials and tribulation, because if somebody just gets money, they squander it. They're called trust key kids. But most importantly, what are your expectations? And let me just give you that in a nutshell. I want everyone to go to Andrew Carnegie's two houses, one in Scotland, where

we'll be going shortly. One of my friends has just bought it, 30,000 acres, which is sort of a mind-blower, and we're writing his biography. And one in New York is easy access, costs $5, get in, it's owned by the Smithsonian. but here's a guy with a third grade education it became the richest man in the world the first line he writes is off in marble on the ceiling he had 60 quotes that he did but authors are the wealth of the nation i'd change one word of course authors of the wealth of the world but the point is he really liked authorship number two, because he said, no man or woman can get rich without enriching all others. Isn't that good? That's powerful. But what he did is he started, I call him Library 2.0. Library 1.0 is obviously Alexander the Great. I mean, he put all the collated information of the whole

world on Alexandria, Egypt, which is one of the places we're going to go to when it's safe and there's not a war going on in the Middle East. But number two is Andy Carnegie. He said, I'll spend the first half of my life making the money, second half of my life giving it away, do the most good. What did he give us? He gave us 4,852 libraries in America and more around the world. But he said, to have a real legacy, remember this last thing, what are your expectations of your kids? For them to be heirs, H-E-R-R-S, right? Some people don't know that word. That means they're the kids, right? Or great grandkids. They have to increase the amount of books in the library by 10% a year.

have to increase the amount of books in the library by 10% a year. They got to increase the amount of members coming in by 10% a year. And then he went on and on and on. But you get the message. You and I know business works. If you're growing, you're thriving. If you're stopping, you're dying. Right. So how does it work then to the fact is, okay, Right. So how does it work then to the fact is, okay, you know, everybody's so busy. They don't have the time, the patience to go about, you know, writing this, writing something, writing a book, writing a biography. And of course, if they're not experts like you in regards to writing and publishing and all the things that it takes to do that and get it printed and everything right, even

from the cover and all that, how do they get that done that's where we come in we started as a ghost writing company as you know i went bankrupt in 1974 i've been building i built the wall street racket club in new york city and houses and botanical gardens all kind and i was building out of pvc out of plastic buying from monsanto and buying $40,000 worth of plastic a month. And they shut me off all at once. I went bankrupt all in one day, which was my best worst experience. For six months, I was sleeping out in the sleeping bay. But I suddenly two guys and said, Hey, look, we'll go see Norman Vincent Peale, the guy who helped us get out of the depression with power positive thinking in the morning in the afternoon we'll go see reverend ike from three to six and in moatfield called harlem it was actually washington heights and i went he turned my mind around because he said if

god's rich and you're made in the image and likeness of god you should be rich and he said every line in the bible is my cup runneth over and john 10 10 i've come you might have life and more abundantly and i thought wow i didn't get't get that in a Baptist and Lutheran church growing up. And so long story short, I tend that guy's church seven years and I'm in New York and just get wild. I teach it as business and living seminar. He and I became very close friends, probably the only billionaire minister ever. And he was a supernatural healer. He could have people come in with cancer for and heal him. He'd have people come in with tuberculosis on a stretcher and heal them. And we're talking about 5,000 people a Sunday into places where Pac-Man, he was an evangelist.

Anyhow, he dies in 2009. He was a great friend. His wife calls me up and said, you've got to write his biography. And I said, I haven't written one of those, but we wrote this biography, which is about Reverend Ike, an extraordinary man of influence. And Psalm 72 says unequivocally, you're here to be an influencer of influencers. Isn't that a great line? Solomon wrote an influencer of influencers. So obviously he influenced me to get rich. I've been doing seminars basically my whole life in a lot of industries and made a lot of people rich.

I think as a living speaker, I'd say two or three of us have probably made more millionaires than anybody else. Myself, Tony Robbins, I can name a few others. And we're all friends. The goal is we've got to get everyone rich. Everyone should be healthy, happy, well-fed. We got to have clear skies, blue water, and everyone get to live sort of the life they want, but they got their input determines their throughput and their output. And everyone reads their need to read positive self-help action books. Now I've written 321 of them and sold over a half billion. I'm

world's best-selling nonfiction author, but I wrote a book which you can go get cheap ten dollars at any bookstore called you have a book in you because everyone has a book in them everyone has a story in them all we do in answer your question i know that's a big circle i've done but as we ghost write your book we interview whoever it is and ghost write their book and And let me just go kind of... Just real quick, you're watching, listening to me, David Kogan, host of the Alliances Hero Show. Make sure that you go to Alliancer.com, or in fact, you can go to Alliances.com and click radio. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com, the only place where entrepreneurs align. And we have with us again, Mark Victor Hansen. You can reach him at markvictorhansenlibrary.com. Once again, that's markvictorhansenlibrary.com.

And we're talking why everyone ultimately needs to have a biography written. And he's explaining why and how and how the process works. Because again, imagine having to write your own. I mean, the time that it would just take and do all that. So just real quick, though, from what I understand, you said you interview them. What, you know, because people are looking at it too, is this, okay, can you explain a little bit more about how that process works?

And I think the thing is, is how long is the process? Like, because someone's looking at, okay, I may not have six months to go ahead and do and spill all everything about my whole life. I hope they're going to live more than six months. If they don't, let's have them talk fast. And the other thing too, Mark, is at what point or what age or what thing is there that somebody should do something like this? Because you do never know. You've asked three phenomenal questions as always, David.

And first of all, I want to put a pitch in. If you're not an entrepreneur, we're going into rough times economically worldwide, decide to be an entrepreneur. And David at Alliances teaches, find a problem and there's a lot of them. If we had 8 billion people, there's 8 billion problems. Solve the problem, problem scale it make a fortune and then and be excessively charitable so earn a lot save a lot invest a lot and become irresistibly charitable okay back to your three questions

uh number one is i if i could do it over again and i've had the greatest life with my ups and downs you ought to write a new biography every 10 years because you're a new person in 10 years um and and if you're really rich and happen to be listening um mitzi purdue who wrote my biography who is amazing you've had her on your show and you know her very well but she only does 22 million chickens a week at Costco. So, you know, so she's, she's giant business. Her daddy, her book she wrote on me is called Relentless. And there's her little picture in the back in case you've never seen her. And she's 84 and happy and now indefatigably in love with a new man,

but because her husband died, but originally her daddy created the Sheridan hotel chain during the depression and built 400 Sheridans. So she's the only double heiress in America. Then she meets this guy, Frank Purdue. And he says, I think I can trust you. And it had the, it's the greatest love story ever. And she wrote his biography or dad, Ernest Hemingway's,

but Ernest Henderson's biography. And now my biography, because she said, you're the most interesting character I've ever met. I said, I am. And she's a great friend with Crystal light and and she wrote it but her family will not let anyone be an heir an h-e-i-r again to the finances of the of the estate unless starting at age 40 they write a biography every decade which i think wow a cool idea, because we change in a decade, and you need to hand it down over the years of what you thought, felt. I mean, if you look at the Bible objectively, just as a book of history, it's 66 authors that told their story of how they related to God,

and how God related to and through them, and how they accomplish greatness. But it's actually, I happen to love the Bible, and I did, obviously, a Bible that we sold 70,000 a week called Chicken Soup in the School Bible. And we did little stories to get in the big story, but we did it so it'd be non-threatening with tan pages and the little colorful stories. It still sounds like crazy. The point is, is that we need to capture the story of your life. Wouldn't you like, David, just you personally answering your question number two, to know what your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, both maternally and put a mother's side and

father's side, did back two, three, four, ten generations? Yes, because I think we don't know really beyond almost our, you know, immediate, right? We really don't know really beyond almost our you know immediate right we really don't know a whole lot at least most don't a grandfather and certainly great grandfather and they're on so yes it would be incredible it would be incredible to know the stories yeah i mean i by the way because i'm now a biographer full-time uh chris and i are writing helping people write their fiction non-, and then biography or autobiography. And we are doing phenomenal. So I'll just give an example.

This thing you said about time is one of the questions. I get called by John Paul DeGioia, who you've had on your show. And JP and I have been friends 30 years. We both won the Horatio Alger Award for Distinguished Americans, where you get a gold medal in the U.S. Supreme Court by Judge Clarence Thomas. Very exciting. And I've been to several of his houses around the world. But JP calls me from a ship in Greece where he's traveling. It was like two years ago with Robert Kennedy Jr. was on his yacht, as it turns out, in his Greek Isles.

And he calls and said, hey, look, I'm done with my book. Can I send it to you? And you endorse it. And he sent it to me, and it had 19 pages. I said, JP, you and I are a long, long, long time friends. I told you to write a book, but this is not a book. He said, well, I told my story. I said, you told this much of your story.

Let me interview you. And then, so in answer to your question, we not only interview JP at depth, but we also interview all the 40 people that he worked with, his three kids, his wife, his suppliers, the guys that helped him, the guys that sued him. We do the whole gamut bad and the ugly and let me just do a story in a nutshell because this is the greatest giver alive in america today very interesting that came from nothing right and you gotta tell me we got a break for a commercial but jp is selling knocking on doors and selling encyclopedia door-to-door as you, as a kid. He's 21 years old, has a

four-year-old already. So obviously he was early married and he grew up in a broken home and all that stuff. But he's going up the stairs and coming down the stairs, his wife said, throw me the keys. There's a note on our little John Anthony baby, who's still alive and runs one of his companies now, he's a big guy. But he gets up and he reads the note and the note says, I'm out of here permanently. You'll never see me again. I've emptied the credit cards. I've emptied the bank accounts. I now got the keys to the car.

I'm adios. I get goosebumps. This is a chicken soup story. Now he has nothing but a motorcycle, a little big old break-down motorcycle. He takes little John Anthony. He goes, he is not a hell's angel, but he goes, he knows these guys and goes up to Griffith Park in LA,

where I've been a lot of times. It's a beautiful place. And goes there and they not only feed him, but the hell's mamas take care of the baby. And now he's got to go on steroids and work and make money. But long story short, he starts Paul Mitchell hair with a lovely, lovely man. Anyhow, I won't take you through that part of the story.

But they got 37,000 beauty salons in 132 countries. He's done it into a trust 365 years in advance. Brilliant. Then all of a sudden, he starts tequila. And they say, you don't know anything about tequila. He goes bar to bar, sells the best tequila, does hundred million bottles a month long story short now his philanthropy first of all he feeds everybody that's hungry in austin texas which is where his main house is and he's got one in malibu and we've been to his we had a stay at his 28 000 square foot um bali house in in uh kona haw Hawaii, which is just beyond spectacular, handmade house.

Anyhow, but then he is down in the Caribbean and goes to an island called Barbuda that's been devastated by the hurricane. And he said, well, somebody's got to do something. I'm somebody, I'll buy it and do something. He made it hurricane proof, hired the top fish doctor in the world called an ichthyologist. They made it so a hurricane will never affect it again oh right back the turtles they brought back the fish they brought back 100 employment he's now doing that for the whole caribbean no one ever thought you could do it

here's a guy that most people would say you're not very sophisticated you're not educated you got a long ponytail you're a hippie right right and uh you always walk around in t-shirts you don't walk around in suits-shirts you don't walk around in suits like a real businessman this is a guy that owns 40 companies and has a multi multi-billionaire then he's in africa and the king of mali says hey look my people are starving he said what do you need he said we need water so he personally pays no obligation because you know the spiritual law is given secret you'll be rewarded openly he obviously is he pays for 44 wells that grow so much food in the country of west africa called mali that he's feeding five countries around and i've gotten to talk to the king i just got to tell

you that he had the king at his place when we're doing one of the zoom call interviews with him and the king is as big as shackq, who's a friend of mine. Shaq has 22-inch food. And the king says, who are you? I said, I'm the world's best-selling author on the modern picture. And the chicken, chicken soup. And the guy starts bouncing up and down like this and says, if you're doing his biography, you've got to do mine.

Everybody wants to tell their story. Everybody has a story or stories that are of impact. And what we do at our company, and we do charge for it, but we bring out the magnificence of that person. And the good, the bad, the ugly, the upset, the detours. Because nobody's life is a straight line. At least, and maybe you know. Maybe yours is perfect and never- You know what, Mark?

I've done- You had a problem mark you know i've done probably now over 1500 interviews of the who's who of and not one single one i don't think matches that at all and nobody and we don't know we you know so it's uh it's it's truly amazing and amazing what you're doing and again one more time too is again you remember you're watching listening to me me, David Kogan, host of the Alliance's Hero Show. It's the only place where entrepreneurs align. Make sure you check it out. And of course, you can check out past interviews.

And again, we've got with us Mark Victor Hansen. You can reach him at markvictorhansenlibrary.com. He's the chicken soup for the Soul Series. Of course, you recognize him from that, plus many others. Ask the bridge for your dreams, the him from that, plus many others. Ask the Bridge from Your Dreams to Your Destiny, The One-Minute Millionaire, The Enlightened Way to Wealth, Cracking the Millionaire Code, Your Key to Enlightened Wealth. And it would take the rest of the show to list the number of books. And you have a number here, Future Diary, and so much more.

And of course, I do need to shout out to my mom because she's how I ended up hearing about you when I was extremely young and I saw her books on the kitchen counter. And here we are later and I'm actually having the opportunity, which is incredible, to interview you today. So thank you. Tell your mom thanks for investing in our books.

My kids have shoes because of your mommy. Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, I need to do one other thing too that I never shared with you is, I used to work for IBM. I was an executive with IBM and they did something in regards to chicken soup for the soul too.

I don't recall exactly, but that was another place that I heard it from. So they used to hire me to do talks and because IBM, which is a joke, means international business machines, a real name, but everyone says it means I've been moved because when you do are successful, they push you around. That's what happened. Yeah, exactly. And they're a great company and they're in, is it Armonk? Is that where they are in New York? I mean, I went to the world headquarters and yeah, I worked in Atlanta, but yes. And and wherever it is i i'm sure they got lots of

headquarters but tom uh what thomas uh what watson started right right and uh they had me come in and teach everybody how to do a story you're the only one that's ever asked me about my experience with ibm but it was beyond stellar everybody they call a big blue and all the men had to wear blue suits so they said when you come in here you wear blue suit white shirt and red ties yes i'll gladly do it and they paid me a lot of money to do a lot of talk so i'm i'm very thankful for ibm and it was a front end of computers and i was there back when they were saying oh that laptop of bill gates that's a dumb idea that has never really oh float anybody's yeah right oh my yeah because they said maybe they'll sell 7 000 of them in a lifetime well tell uh so our audience is definitely going to want to know i want to make sure we go

back to this is is where do they start they've heard this interview they're interested about okay i want to have a bio i want to have a biography you know where, where do I start? What's the process to it? So let us know. So if they go to markvictoransonlibrary.com, we have, first of all, you'll get to see all the other books we're doing, like John Paul DeGioia and Lyle Anderson, the father of desert golf here, where, you know, he built Desert Mountain, Desert Highland, all that great stuff with the little guy that's unknown, the number one golfer in the historical world is Jack Nicklaus, who's even

won more than Tiger Woods, but those courses were all built by Lyle here. And then we're doing one with a guy that we got to have at E-Alliance is Ike Shahada. I'm sure you've eaten at Ike's Famous Love Sandwiches. I had them on. Oh, you did

have Ike on. Okay, I was going to tell you we got to have them on. Anyhow, we're doing Ike's. You're doing what for him? What? What are you doing for him? We're writing his biography. Oh, my gosh. He owned, so Bob Proctor and I own two companies together

who just passed away at 87. God bless Bobby. Anyhow, he called me up the night before he died, and he said, I said, what are you doing? And he said, I knew he was going to pass, but he said, I'm taking a Concord to heaven. I said, what a nice metaphor. Because anyhow, I won't go through that. But Bob and I talked to Ike and Bob talked to Ike and said, okay, Ike, you got to have a written goal. You're the fastest growing food franchise in America. Ike's famous love sandwich and all. Ike's famous love donuts, which is even growing

faster. And he said, how many stores do you want? He said, I'm going to beat Subway and have 5,001. So, you know, Bob and I teach, you have a little card. I'm so happy and grateful that I'm opening up 5,001 stores and doing this, this, this, and making a great profit. And it just, his story is so miraculous because he was homeless. Another homeless guy like JP that came out of nothing. And his story is so good. So as you know, I still do a lot of talks, predominantly at giant universities that are interested in free enterprise.

And Chris and I are going out and talking at the biggest one in Utah in a couple of days, UVU, Utah Valley University, where Preston graduated, our son. And so we'll have the whole giant school because they want to make sure everyone understands. Well, I'm holding up the mirror for you. Everyone understands it. I'm holding up the mirror for you. Entrepreneurship is an opportunity that never existed before. It exists now, ladies and gentlemen.

And I've written mostly entrepreneurial-oriented books. So the point I'm making is, yes, you can go get a job with a man and go through the door of security. Or you can go through the door of opportunity and say, especially if you're single and don't have any responsibility other than you, solve a problem, make it big. And one of the books we just finished was, have you had Tommy Mello on your show? The, yes. Actually, I didn't have him on my show. He had me on his show three weeks ago. We need to switch.

Three weeks ago. But Tommy owns A1 Garage Door. Yes. Here's a guy who is told in school, you're uneducable, you've got ADD and ADHD, and you're never going to get a job, and you're never going to do anything. So he fixes some guy's garage door, and then that guy says to another guy, get another garage door. And then pretty soon he fixes so many, he has to hire people to fix them. And now last year he did $650 million. Two of his guys that we're doing books with made a million dollars each.

And he is putting together all the service corporations here in Arizona and his headquarters here. And if you ever go to his office, it blows your mind. There's a wall as big as the one next to me as he's got a glass case. And the first book that he read was Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People and then he read thing where it's saying read our book ask and and then he wrote it we wrote his book with him called Elevate because he wants everyone to elevate their awareness and not get stuck in

somebody that is a naysayer every one of us I'd love you to diss what I'm about to say, but every one of us gets beat up and says, you're stupid, you're dumb, you're incompetent, you can't do it, you're not smart enough, you can't build a business, you can't go here, you can't marry that kind of woman. Whatever the negative is, the world is, I believe, 90% negative. And if you read any of the newspapers, they're all negative basically. And so your show alliances is so critical because Zig Ziglar would say, it gives you a checkup from the neck up. Cause from the neck up that you go up and guys like Tommy is,

and by the way, ladies and gentlemen, well, that name sounds weak. This guy's big, strong exercise hard every day. He's solid. He's a solid muscle. And I did all the interviews with him for the Napoleon Hill Foundation. I can promise you mentally, he is totally solid because when you decide to make a difference, your mind clicks, your 18

billion brain cells go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And you get focused in a passionately purposeful direction. Everything happens. And since we wrote his book, I think he's brought us three or four other of his peers to do books. We're doing one on plumbing now, because here's what Crystal and I believe, and I think you'll believe it too. Half the people that go to college should not go to college. They should do service industries, whether it's plumbing, whether it's air conditioning and heating. I don't want to use the abbreviations because some people around the world won't know what that is. Garage doors.

Who'd ever think you could become a billionaire selling garage doors? Right, right. And then, oh, let me do one more thing about Tommy. So Tommy says, look, the garage doors break too much, the spring. So for 100 years, no one ever did a new spring. They just did one. So he invented his own spring. Now here's a guy that's purportedly uneducable and slow. He is not slow. Just like our friend Les Brown, not uneducable. Les Brown is one of the greatest speakers in the world and my close friend for 50 years, but he builds a new spring that guarantee

guarantees. So he does your garage door for you, david and it's guaranteed for 20 years not one year not two years but 20 years amazing no i was quite you're right and just one other shout out because uh he'll probably end up hearing or seeing this too is this uh tom i remember so we did this interview literally maybe a few weeks ago and at the end he takes me in to show me his, you know, training and all that. The place is spotless, spotless where he does it, huge spotless. Then he's got his whole training crew there. I don't know, maybe 60, 70 people there. And he says, I all want you to meet David. David, tell him something. And he had me tell a story to him all just right off the cuff and all that. And it was quite interesting. And I and i mean and you know the thing i noticed about him too and i think this is important just about with anything

it's the details he had every everybody was wearing the uniforms the place was so it was cleaner than any restaurant that i've ever been to have you ever seen his place oh i've been there i've been through it within training and he The deal is he deals in impeccability. The place is impeccable. The cars are impeccable. He insists. He says, look, he takes people that could not get a job anywhere else that are willing and have aspiration and inspiration, dedication, put up the perspiration.

He pays them to come for six weeks, houses them, gives them a truck, trains them on the spot with one of his people that is making a lot of money. They got a buddy up and then their buddy gets to watch them until they're perfect. Then they go out and he gives them a truck. He gives them a territory and a business. He was in 35 states. Now this year he's in 50 states going into Canada and Europe. The guy is unstoppable.

He has an unquenchable space to serve. And, you know, Christ, I said, the greatest function of serving of all, he wants everybody to have a good safe garage, garage door on their house or condom or apartment, a condominium or apartment, you know, or complex or building or office building. And, you know, he just, he is solid. And now he's doing all these other businesses. And then, you know, I keep helping like every day I'm watching videos and stuff by different people like Cody Sanchez. And I send to him and he always says, I don't know how you find all this brilliant stuff that you're curating for

me. And I said, well, I just know everybody that's anybody. And I want you to know more because the more, you know, the more you grow, the more you help other people. So what I want to dispel in those people watching this well you're rich so it's easy for you no i came out of absolutely zip markey here has paid for his own clothes since he's nine years old because my parents would they're danish immigrants that didn't speak english they didn't know there was no esL English as a second language I had to and my brothers we all had to work I was taught work I think and I'm 76 I don't need to work I'm financially my future days are paid for I promise you the point is I'm working because I love it and I want to help other

people that's why everyone's got to read you can't lead if you can't read it and and you everyone needs to read books and hopefully they'll read some of mine and yours and everybody else's but the more we write the more chance there is we can push back and and the world's never been better off than it is because of guys like andrew carnegie who gave us the libraries but we need everybody around the world to read positive inspirational books because you get an academic education that's great but you need a self-help education of audio video and and reading for the rest of your life in other words the first 10 minutes and 10 pages you ought to read 10 pages of positive but first thing in the morning

and launch your day so you escalate and elevate your awareness. And as you do, your life's going to click. I promise you, when I stopped reading the New York Times and all the bad news fit to print, and I started reading positive self-help action stuff, my life for the last 50 years has been pretty much vertically up. Not that I've had hiccups, but overall it's up. You know, yeah, positivity, absolutely. There's too much negativity. You're right. I totally stay focused on that. Now, Mark, I think a couple other questions I want to ask you, and I've been dying to ask you this, you know, you've written a ton of books. You've read a tremendous amount of books of the books that you've written. If there was again, hypothetically,

there's a fire, you're only able to pull one of your books out. Which book would that be? And I know it's probably the book my wife and I wrote is critical for everyone right now for three reasons. Number one, it's asked, like you've said again and again, to bridge from your dreams. Everyone's got dreams. That's why we had dinner with a billionaire and he said, I live in my dreams. The bridge from your dreams to your destiny. Everyone was coded at birth with a destiny. I don't know what your destiny is. I'm going to tell you how to get it in one second, but we only cover three things. You can only ask three channels. You ask yourself, you ask others, ask God. Ask yourself, others, and ask God. That's

it. There's no other channels. And the way you get in to find out what your destiny is, if you don't know, and I'll tell you what mine is in a second, but 101 times before you go to sleep at night, after the phone's off, the kids are stopped, the dog's not barking, it's dark, quietly in the quiet of your mind, because that's when the mind is most programmable. You say, God, what's your destiny for me? God, what's your destiny for me? God, what's your destiny for me? God, what's your destiny for me? In the middle of the night, you're going to wake up, make sure you've got a pen and paper next to the bed, and write it out. Get your little butt out of bed and write it on. Because when God comes through, you say, oh, I'll remember in the morning. You won't remember in the morning. You

say, man, I had the best idea. I know I'm supposed to do this. I mean, I knew I was supposed to be a professional speaker. I knew I was supposed to be a writer. I knew now I was supposed to be the, I'm probably the fast growing publisher in America because the people go to New York to get a publishing and Jack and I got turned down by 144 people. And then finally a little HCI, Health Communications said, well, we'll buy it, but you guys got to buy 20,000 books at $6 each. That's $120,000, right?

And if we went home to our wives and told them what we signed up for, they'd go, ah! Right, right. And that's why everyone gets rejected going to New York almost, unless your name is Joe Rogan or something. And I don't think he's got a book out yet. I want to talk to him. But, Mark, how many people would quit after the first one that said no or the second?

Certainly by the fifth time, they're done. They're done. Yeah. And then we wouldn't have a lot of people without 10 000 experiences which how do you mentally keep being able to do it how do you know to to go on past the five past the six past the seven if all these people are saying no you there's got to be a point where you start questioning yourself maybe this isn't but two two answers number one is we do a clean four-letter word. We say N-E-X-T, next.

Because there's always out there someone who will fund you, buy it, and move it. And Jack and I were talking. We had two marketplaces. I owned a business marketplace, still do, or some part of it. And Jack owned the educational marketplace. He'd already written a book and sold a lot of copies of 101 Ways to Build Self-Esteem in the Classroom. Jack served in his class at Harvard.

He's a superstar, no question about it. But he's shy. He's introverted. He's an inside guy. I'm the outside guy. I'm the marketing sales guy. And I've been selling, like I said, since I was nine. I sold the most greeting cards ever in America at nine years old because I wanted a bicycle because my parents couldn't afford a bicycle.

And I wanted it. And I visualized. I had a picture on a wall every night and like this 101 times, I'd go, I'd see myself bicycling, you know, and being what's called a windy city wheelman, you know, which I obviously was and did one a lot of long distance races long, long ago. That's not today. Anyhow. So that's number one. And number two is if you've got a white hot burning desire, you will burn through all the negativity, burn through all the rejection. And the place you've got to hold your desire is white hot is in your head.

And then you've got to just find one other person, one and one equals power of 11. And nowadays it's obviously my wife, who I call the goddess of exquisiteness, Crystal. You know, she and I do everything together and move as one. We are two hearts with one major soul. People say, well, you're a formidable couple. And now our little company is, yes, we're writing books, but within five years, you're going to see, we're going to be a giant entertainment company. And the first story in here, which, cause I know you've read this, is a fable of michaela and i said to chris so we got to do it a fable because i'm danish and i'm the only guy you probably ever met that read all 147 of hans christian anderson's works in danish right but you know all of them

because walt disney bought them ugly duckling the king has no clothes i can name every one of them and you'd go i know that story but i know it because my kids and I watch a movie or you and I watch movies when we were kids. And I'm older than you. But the point is, we wrote the fable and now we got people in Hollywood saying we want to buy it. But Crystal has written the screenplay, which is a whole different level of writing. And she's taken tutelage from the best of the best. And like when they did James Bond with Pierce brosnan they do three of them at once so they do three right six years of shows all the shots he does in london all the shots in

israel all the shots in turkey and change clothes and that way the actor is cheaper he doesn't break a thing he doesn't have any scam or she have any scandals isn't it cool that is great that's and they're saying our little fable of michaela is going to be uh bigger than harry potter and it so what i'm saying to all of you is and i did write a book right here behind me how to think bigger than you ever thought you could think and you can buy that again for like 10 bucks at any bookstore or amazon or wherever you want to buy it um the point is we all need to think bigger, right? Well, I just need to make 50 grand or 100 grand or 150 grand a year. Well, if I try to pay you right now, Dave, and I try to hire you and I say,

well, tell me what you're worth. I only want to pay you $10. You're going to go, are you nuts? And most of us settle too early. You're all vastly, potentially rich. If you do your due, you got to be who you want to be first in awareness. Then you got to do some activity, whatever that is to be prosperous. And then you'll have whatever it is you want to have, because all of it's available. If you can desire it, you can manifest it. That's why I think we're rich, which is a critical book to read. Says, whatever the mind can conceive

and believe at depth, it can achieve. And I wanted to be world's best-selling author and now Guinness Book of Records says Mark Victor Hansen's world's best-selling non-fiction author. Congratulations, wonderful. Well, Mark, it's been an absolute honor to have you on. I love every minute.

Go to markvictorh Victor Hanson library.com. Mark Victor Hanson. We're good friends. Thank you so much again. Chicken soup for the soul series. And of course, remember, everyone ultimately needs to have a biography written. So make sure you reach out to Mark Victor Hanson library.com. This has been David Cogan with the alliances hero show continue to stay tuned and make sure that you go to alliances.com that's e-l-i-a-n-c-s.com the only place where entrepreneurs align mark thank you so much again for being on the show today my joy and i hope everyone whether

they do the biography by themselves or autobiography or with us, the world will better off and so will you. Absolutely. Thank you.